Relationships of sonification to music and sound art

The definition of sonification has been reframed in recent years but remains somewhat in flux; the basic concepts and procedural flows have remained relatively unchanged. Recent definitions have focused on the objective the important uses of sonification in terms of scientific method. The full realization of the potential of the field must also include the craft and art of music composition. The author proposes examining techniques of sonification in a two-order framework: direct and procedural. The impact of new technologies and historical roots of that work argues that framing this broad topic should be in terms inclusive of scientific method and craftsmanship and art. The expressive use of sonic time-based data flows needs to be refined and expanded. The unexamined territory of how a broad-based population of listeners on a subjective, as well as objective level needs, have to be included in this new field.     

Soundscape, sonification, and sound activism

In this article, the author will argue that the act of listening through public soundwalks and other formal and informal exercises builds environmental and social awareness and promotes changes in social and cultural practices. By examining the act of listening as an alternative pathway and comparing the research, writings, and creative work of leaders of the acoustic ecology movement (i.e., R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Bernie Krause), the author hopes to shed light on these potentials. For purposes of comparison, projects that explore the sonification and audification of inaudible signals will be examined, including the work of Christina Kubisch. The process of audification and sonification of these signals will be examined in comparison to soundscape experiences in order to develop a theory of data sonification based on the soundscape. In order to build a community around the urban soundscape, in 2003, the author co-founded the New York Society of Acoustic Ecology. Through this endeavor, she co-created the ongoing NYSoundmap and Sound Seeker projects, which provide some practical research for this article. Thus, by comparing and contrasting theoretical writings with leading listening exercises, public soundwalks, soundscape-related brainstorming sessions, and presenting field recordings in various settings, new methodologies will be documented.     

High-level control of sound synthesis for sonification processes

Methods of sonification based on the design and control of sound synthesis is presented in this paper. The semiotics of isolated sounds was evidenced by performing fundamental studies using a combined acoustical and brain imaging (event-related potentials) approach. The perceptual cues (which are known as invariants) responsible for the evocations elicited by the sounds generated by impacts, moving sound sources, dynamic events and vehicles (car-door closing and car engine noise) were then identified based on physical and perceptual considerations. Lastly, some examples of the high-level control of a synthesis process simulating immersive 3-D auditory scenes, interacting objects and evoked dynamics are presented.     

Solo instrumental music analysis using the source-filter model as a sound production model considering temporal dynamics

A source-filter model, originally devised to represent a sound production process, has been widely used to estimate both of the source signal which includes pitch information and the synthesis filter which includes vowel information, as from sounds of a speech signal. We use this model to identify instruments by their instrumental sound signal. However, this model suffers from an indeterminacy problem. To resolve it, we employ three elements of the sound: loudness, pitch and timbre. Our assumption is that the source signal is represented by time-varying pitch and amplitude, and the synthesis filter by time-invariant line spectral frequency parameters. We construct a probabilistic model that represents our assumption with an extension of the source-filter model. For learning of model parameters, we employed an EM-like minimization algorithm of a cost function called the free energy. Reconstruction of the spectrum with the estimated source signal and synthesis filter, and instrument identification by using the model parameters of the estimated synthesis filter are performed to evaluate our approach, showing that this learning scheme could achieve simultaneous estimation of the source signal and the synthesis filter.

Temporal data management systems: a comparative view

Characteristics and requirements of systems for temporal data management in the areas of data and knowledge bases, artificial intelligence, and software engineering are investigated and discussed on the basis of a case study. Six representative approaches were selected for this analysis, with the goal of identifying particular features of systems proposed in different areas. The six approaches are: Allen's interval-based logic, Dean and McDermott's time map management, Kowalski and Sergot's event calculus, Maiocchi and Pernici's TSOS. Snodgrass' TQuel, and Hagelstein's ERAE. The characteristics of each system are classified and compared. On the basis of this analysis, a framework for the evaluation of temporal systems and for the specification of temporal data management systems is proposed     

Heart sound as a biometric

In this paper, we propose a novel biometric method based on heart sound signals. The biometric system comprises an electronic stethoscope, a computer equipped with a sound card and the software application. Our approach consists of a robust feature extraction scheme which is based on cepstral analysis with a specified configuration, combined with Gaussian mixture modeling. Experiments have been conducted to determine the relationship between various parameters in our proposed scheme. It has been demonstrated that heart sounds should be processed within segments of 0.5 s and using the full resolution in frequency domain. Also, higher order cepstral coefficients that carry information on the excitation proved to be useful. A preliminary test of 128 heart sounds from 128 participants was collected to evaluate the uniqueness of the heart sounds. The HTK toolkit produces a 99% recognition rate with only one mismatch. Next, a more comprehensive test consisting almost 1000 heart sounds collected from 10 individuals over a period of 2 months yields a promising matching accuracy of 96% using the proposed feature and classification algorithm. A real-time heart sound authentication system is then built and can be used in two modes: to identify a particular individual or to verify an individual's claimed identity.     

A survey of tagging techniques for music,speech and environmental sound

Sound tagging has been studied for years. Among all sound types, music, speech, and environmental sound are three hottest research areas. This survey aims to provide an overview about the state-of-the-art development in these areas. We discuss about the meaning of tagging in different sound areas at the beginning of the journey. Some examples of sound tagging applications are introduced in order to illustrate the significance of this research. Typical tagging techniques include manual, automatic, and semi-automatic approaches. After reviewing work in music, speech and environmental sound tagging, we compare them and state the research progress to date. Research gaps are identified for each research area and the common features and discriminations between three areas are discovered as well. Published datasets, tools used by researchers, and evaluation measures frequently applied in the analysis are listed. In the end, we summarise the worldwide distribution of countries dedicated to sound tagging research for years.     

Cost efficiency analysis with ordinal data: a theoretical and computational view

Standard Data Envelopment Analysis models obtain the cost efficiency of units when the data are known exactly, but these models fail to evaluate the units in the presence of ordinal data. Therefore, this paper provides models for the treatment of ordinal data in cost efficiency analysis. The models have multiplier forms with additional weight restrictions. The main idea in constructing these models is based on the weighted enumeration of the number of inputs/outputs of each unit which are categorized on the same scale rate. Some techniques to reduce the complexity of the models are introduced.     

Listen and learn: An investigation of sonification as an instructional variable to improve understanding of complex environments

Sonification, the use of non-speech audio to convey information, was used to test whether the simultaneous presentation of visual and artificially created auditory (sound) information significantly improves scores on comprehension tests of complex, dynamic computer simulations of an ecology microworld over scores from college participants who were presented visual information alone. Brief training was provided and all tasks were completed online. Participants were also tested for musical aptitude and preferred learning modality. Results indicate that while age and grade point average significantly predicted score on the comprehension test, the treatment tested here did not. For one-month retention of knowledge, only grade point average was significant. Nevertheless, the experimental methodology and the demonstrated convenience of online data collection are a contribution to the field. Moreover, the size of several positive effects and the identification of opportunities for improvement in the presentation of information invite a follow-up study.     

The aesthetic turn in sonification towards a social and cultural medium

The public release of datasets on the internet by government agencies, environmental scientists, political groups and many other organizations has fostered a social practice of data visualization. The audiences have expectations of production values commensurate with their daily experience of professional visual media. At the same time, access to this data has allowed visual designers and artists to apply their skills to what was previously a field dominated by scientists and engineers. The ‘aesthetic turn’ in data visualization has sparked debates between the new wave and older more scientifically grounded schools of thought on the topic. Sonification is not as well known or commonly practiced as visualization. But sound is a naturally affective, aesthetic and cultural medium. The extension of the aesthetic turn to sonification could transform this field from a scientific curiosity and engineering instrument into a popular mass medium. This paper proposes that a design approach can facilitate an aesthetic turn in sonification that integrates aesthetics and functionality by dissolving divisions between scientific and artistic methods. The first section applies the design perspective to the definition of sonification by replacing the linguistic concept of representation with non-verbal concept of functionality. The next section describes applications of the TaDa design method that raised aesthetic issues particular to sonification practice. The final section proposes a pragmatic aesthetics that distinguishes sonification from the auditory sciences and sonic arts. A design perspective may lead to a future where the general public tunes into pop sonifications for listening enjoyment as well as useful information about the world.     

The Pulse of the Earth and sonification

Le Souffle de la Terre/The Pulse of the Earth is an on-going sound work (1996–20–) by the artist L. Abenavoli. She outlines the sonification methods employed in the making of the work in an analysis of its technical and conceptual features. The work is described in terms of her artistic objectives.     

MEMSA: mining emerging melody structures from music query data

Effective and efficient mining of music structure patterns from music query data is one of the most interesting issues of multimedia data mining. In this paper, we introduce a new kind of pattern, called emerging melody structure (EMS), for knowledge discovery from music melody streams. EMSs are defined as music data items with melody strings whose support increase significantly from one sliding window to another window from streaming melody sequences. The discovered EMS can be used to predict the future trend of online music style recommendation, to personalize the Web service of music downloading priority, for music composers to compose new music or for service provider to collect more similar music. Therefore, an efficient data mining approach, called MEMSA (Mining Emerging Melody Structure Algorithm), is proposed to discover all EMSs from streaming music query data over sliding windows. In the framework of MEMSA, a prefix tree-based data structure, called EMS-tree (Emerging Melody Structure tree), is constructed for maintaining temporal EMSs effectively. Experimental results show that the proposed method MEMSA is an efficient algorithm for mining all EMSs from streaming melody sequences efficiently.     

虚拟数据视图的设计与实现

信息集成工具的可用性以及扩展性是集成中非常重要的问题。虚拟数据视图结合已有的信息集成技术,应用比较先进的可扩展标记语言（XML）和XML模式语言XML Schema技术,实现了一种基于XML的信息集成模型的基础部分——虚拟信息集成层。研究中充分考虑了系统的各项性能要求以及一般系统不支持的文本类数据源,结合部分设计代码,详细阐述了视图的实现方式和基本结构。     

Scoresynth: a system for the synthesis of music scores based onPetri nets and a music algebra

The authors show that they have chosen and organized symbols depending on instrumental needs within common music notations. The new kind of representation they propose makes up a conceptual music framework with as many different levels of abstraction as the musician needs. It allows them to explicitly describe and process what they call music objects (both traditional and nontraditional music objects), by which they mean anything that could have a musical meaning and can be thought of as an entity with a name and some relationship with other music objects. They describe a tool called Scoresynth, which uses Petri nets to describe, process, and synthesize music scores. They examine Scoresynth's features and explain how it works     

Pitch estimation of speech and music sound based on multi-scale product with auditory feature extraction

The pitch is a crucial parameter in speech and music signals. However, due to severe noisy conditions, missing harmonics, unsuitable physical vibration, the determination of pitch presents a great challenge when desiring to get a good accuracy. In this paper, we propose a method for pitch estimation of speech and music sounds. Our method is based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of the multi-scale product (MP) provided by a feature auditory model of the sound signals. The auditory model simulates the spectral behaviour of the cochlea by a gammachirp filter-bank, and the out/middle ear filtering by a low-pass filter. For the two output channels, the FFT function of the MP is computed over frames. The MP is based on constituting the product of the speech and music wavelet transform coefficients at three scales. The experimental results show that our method estimates the pitch with high accuracy. Besides, our proposed method outperforms several other pitch detection algorithms in clean and noisy environments.     

Pleasant music as a countermeasure against visually induced motion sickness

Visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) is a well-known side-effect in virtual environments or simulators. However, effective behavioral countermeasures against VIMS are still sparse. In this study, we tested whether music can reduce the severity of VIMS. Ninety-three volunteers were immersed in an approximately 14-minute-long video taken during a bicycle ride. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups, either including relaxing music, neutral music, stressful music, or no music. Sickness scores were collected using the Fast Motion Sickness Scale and the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire. Results showed an overall trend for relaxing music to reduce the severity of VIMS. When factoring in the subjective pleasantness of the music, a significant reduction of VIMS occurred only when the presented music was perceived as pleasant, regardless of the music type. In addition, we found a gender effect with women reporting more sickness than men. We assume that the presentation of pleasant music can be an effective, low-cost, and easy-to-administer method to reduce VIMS.     

Applying evolutionary algorithms to materialized view selection in a data warehouse

Effective analysis of genome sequences and associated functional data requires access to many different kinds of biological information. A data warehouse [14,16] plays an important role for storage and analysis for genome sequence and functional data. A data warehouse stores lots of materialized views to provide an efficient decision-support or OLAP queries. The view-selection problem addresses to select a fittest set of materialized views from a variety of MVPPs 0 forms a challenge in data warehouse research. In this paper, we present genetic algorithm to choose materialized views. We also use experiments to demonstrate the power of our approach. We would like to thank the authors, i.e. J. Yang, K. Karlapalem, and Q. Li, of the paper [15]. In this study, we borrow their mathematical model of the work in [15].     

Contextual rewriting as a sound and complete proof method for conditional LOG-specifications

In this paper we provide foundations to contextual rewriting. We present the class of LOG-specifications, which may be seen, essentially, as a variety of conditional specifications, which may be seen, essentially, as a of LOG-specifications are LOG-algebras, i.e. algebras satisfying that their boolean part coincides with the boolean algebra of two elements. With respect to this semantics, a proof-system called L is presented characterizing logical consequence proof-theoretically. Then, we show that, under adequate assumptions of confluence and finite termination, contextual rewriting is a complete method for this kind of specifications.This work was partially done during the first author's stay at C.R.I.N., with financial support of the Spain-France Integrated Action 34/212. Research partially supported by a subcontract with SESA-Alcatel under the ESPRIT program in the project PROSPECTRA, ref # 390.